Aliens in the Ozarks
by SociallyInept
Summary: Drabbles about Mestral (ST:Ent) and his daughter Valdena (OC). Set post "Upon a Star" in my series but not chronological.
1. Mahjong

In Which Mestral and Valdena Play Mahjong

Bright green eyes looked skeptical, and the young girl's black hair was swept back by a pale hand in confusion so that she could get a better look at the pile of tiles her father has just finished laying out on the oak kitchen table. She adjusted her seating so she could see better over her father's shoulder.

"What is this?" Valdena asked, confused. The tiles had some similar patterns, but there was quite a variety of them and they were laid out in pretty patterns across a section of the table.

Mestral began adding roughly-carved pieces to the various levels of the board as his daughter hovered. "This is mahjong. Since you have claimed that chess is no longer a challenge, I present to you a new game."

"Chess is really boring," Val confirmed, furrowing her brows. "What is…mahjong?"

"This is also a game of strategy. A game of calculation and skill. However it is also a game of luck. You may find this more stimulating. It originated during the Qing dynasty in ancient China, and has remained popular since."

Mestral finished laying out the tiles. "These," he pointed to a set with circles in various numeric patterns, "are called dots."

He gestured towards what appeared to be sticks in different amounts, "These are the bamboos." Mestral continued to explain the rules of the game to Val. She grew more interested the further he explained.

She sat down in her seat opposite Mestral, ready to begin a game. As they played, to keep her as occupied as possible, Mestral quizzed Val on her schoolwork and studies. She found it wonderfully challenging to try to keep up with both, and although it was no surprise when she lost the first round, Val smiled up at her father.

"That was a nice change," she said. Mestral nodded his head slowly in acquiescence. They played another round, which Val lost again gracefully.

"You will be a worthy opponent someday," he encouraged, which only made Val's smile grow. Even though she was only six, Valdena was half Vulcan. The only one of her kind. She had her mother's eyes and blood, and her father's hair and intellect. Her most recent book report had been on The Odyssey by Homer, which had left her second grade class speechless and baffled. The teacher had called Mestral in for a parent-teacher conference after that.

The challenges of raising a hybrid child on his own was sometimes quite preoccupying, however days like this were worth all of the 'bad' days. To engage his daughter's mind, to see her across the table from him healthy and strong, was more valuable than anything he had ever owned.

As Mestral got up to begin preparing dinner, Val went outside to feed the chickens they had begun to raise. Through the window above the sink, he saw his young daughter spreading feed and talking to the hens, with towering forest behind and a lake glimmering between the tree trunks, and he knew peace.


	2. Haircuts

Ok so teenagers are kind of terrible. Mood swings, hormones, peer pressure. We can only imagine what that is like for Vulcans. And our Val gets the best of both worlds as puberty hits!

Valdena wanted a haircut. The preteen girl flipped through the pictures in the magazine at the register while she waited to buy a box of candy. Mestral had dropped her off at the doors to the supercenter while he went to fuel the truck, and she ran in to grab some water bottles for themselves and a little candy for herself.

She turned the page. So many of the women had their hair pulled back in beautiful updos and ponytails, braids, short hair, and all sorts of elaborate styles that were in fashion. The woman in front of her in line finished checking out, so Val sighed and put the magazine back, and pulled her toboggan lower on her head. Her long black hair flowed loose from within and was not in any style at all.

The cashier looked at her a little odd but since Val was polite and had exact change, didn't make anything of it. Val took her candy and receipt and walked towards the doors glumly. Mestral didn't take long to pull up to the doors and Val hopped in.

She looked in the visor mirror and sighed at herself. Mestral furrowed his brows and glanced at her as he pulled out of the grocery store.

"What is the matter, daughter?" he asked. Val debated honestly answering that, and decided to.

"Father," she began slowly, "can I cut my hair?"

Mestral's expression didn't change. "Why would you desire to? Your ears must remain covered."

Val snarled a little. "But why? It's a freak genetic happenstance and I have no reason to be ashamed!"

Her father glanced over sharply, and Val reigned in her emotions before she could be chastised.

"It's just," she continued, calmer this time, "I only ever have it like this and I want a trendy style. I want short hair, like in the magazines."

Mestral's expression softened, but didn't fully yield. "Your ears are not just a birth defect. They are your….heritage."

Val sighed. "I get it, I'm half alien. Whatever. That isn't doing me any good. No one knows about aliens."

Mestral nodded slightly as he drove. "That is true, however there are many aspects of your health and being that do not coordinate with the standard range of human genetic deviation. You are unique."

Val turned to pout out the window. "You want to 'protect' me." She said sarcastically.

"I want you to be safe," he said.

"You want me to be caged and invisible," she complained. Mestral couldn't think of a response.


	3. Once Upon a Time

Sometimes, at night, Mestral remembered.

Her voice was wonderful, like forbidden fruit. Lily's voice filled his mind, what she spoke of lost to his subconscious. It was bliss, and waking was torture. However, he had her child born from his loins to care for and protect, and he must awaken.

"Mestral," he heard her say, and then nothing.

And then he awoke.

His toddler daughter was staring at him over the edge of the bed.

"Dad-dy?" she said, confused. His daughter was hovering just within his reach, her pacifier in one hand for once instead of her mouth. "Daddy you saying silly words."

Mestral picked his daughter up and set her on the bed beside him. He did not recall speaking in his sleep. He knew humans did- Lily, his human mate, had spoken in her sleep often, sometimes shouting loud enough that Mestral awoke and had to readjust her position and comfort her in her sleep. His human mate had seen much in her years and he had done his best to accommodate that into their sleeping patterns.

Of course, it would have been more effective if she had lived longer.

He swallowed the pang and drew his daughter close. "Perhaps a story will help you fall back asleep," he kept his voice smooth despite the eruptions below the surface.

Val, barely a toddler, cuddled herself in close. "Okay," she smiled and closed her eyes in anticipation.

"Your mother and I met-" he began, but was interrupted.

"No!" Valdena said in her light pink onesie pajamas, "You have to say 'once upon a time' on stories, Daddy!"

Mestral didn't grin at his daughter but it took some work not to, "Of course, my child. Once upon a time, a young,, red-haired woman decided that she was going to be an artist…."

Eventually, they both fell asleep in Mestral's bed.


	4. Influenza Probably

Valdena sneezed. Sick again!

She seemed to catch every bug that went around school- she didn't even have to go far to her classes- despite her age, the fifteen-year-old was a freshman at the University of Arkansas, being the closest college to her father and home in the Ozarks. Still, winter weather and illness made the commute hard sometimes and for some reason, she seemed prone to catching every bug that passed through the campus.

"Daaaaaaad," she moaned loudly. After a few moments her father appeared, greying but still dark-haired and dignified. "I am so sick I might die here."

"You are not dying, Valdena," Mestral gently chastised. "It is merely a variant on this year's influenza virus. It will run its course and you will be fine."

Val groaned loudly. "It feels like death!" she moaned. "I can't make it to Calculus 401 today, call my professor and tell them the date of my funeral." She tried to languish in her bed to the best of her abilities without knowing what languishing should look like. It probably didn't involve the plaid flannel sheets her bed was lined with.

Mestral didn't take the bait. "If you do not go to class today your grade will take a .02 reduction for the semester."

Val wasn't fooled. "So basically I will be fine, minus the killer disease I have," she concluded.

Mestral didn't react but as he turned to leave the room he mentioned, "This may not be relevant to your plans but your classes have been called off for today due to snowfall."

Val blinked. "Oh." She said. "Then yeah, I feel fine."


	5. Playground Crush

Started this one with a Terry Pratchett quote, yep. From his novel Lords and Ladies. I like to think that Mestral frowned upon fiction so Val had to sneak it in where she could.

"Most people who have found that they are more intelligent than most around them, have yet to learn that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out."

Valdena paused, frowning. She glanced up from her book and saw that nobody was paying any attention to her. The teachers at the primary school insisted that recreation time was critical to childhood development, but Val suspected that she was an exception to that rule. It merely slowed her down; of course, she worked quite hard at home, keeping up with the gardens and the extra schooling her father put her through.

Despite being six years old, Valdena was on the tail end of fifth grade. After several tedious years, her teachers and even the principal had convinced her father that her intellect could not be hidden, and she needed to be accelerated to an appropriate educational level.

Her coursework may feature the Hardy Boys mysteries, but at home it was 'The Iliad'. At school she pretended to learn multiplication; at home, advanced trigonometry. Her brain was able to process all of this, yet some of her solely-human classmates still had trouble tying their shoes. She had no idea why she was so much smarter than her peers, but it was quite stressful.

Val placed her bookmark in the fantasy book and stood up, brushing the dirt off her jeans. The teachers had given up keeping her from reading at recess over a year ago, trying to get her to make friends. That was a failed endeavor. Everybody she liked was well past middle age.

"Hey, nerd!" a young male voice called out. Val barely deflected the basketball aimed at her head in time. "Stop hogging the basketball court and go hide in the library with the other losers!"

The second time, she wasn't so lucky. Another basketball make contact, almost knocking Val over. She dropped her book and watched the pages crumple as it hit the pavement.

"I am not even doing anything!" she protested. The third basketball was launched, and Val braced herself as it approached.

An arm in a green canvas sleeve blocked it. A boy stood in front of her, tall for their age. "Knock it off guys. Get back in the trash where you belong!"

Val looked at him. The brown-haired boy was a known trouble maker. She had mentally classified him as a 'chaotic neutral' type, and disregarded it. Perhaps this was due for revision.

"You're bleeding," he said, gesturing towards her cheek. Val, wide-eyed, kept looking at him as she felt her face. Yes, warm and wet. Nothing that wouldn't heal.

"I'll be fine," she said awkwardly. "I am Val."

She held out her hand in a daze. The boy glanced down at her bloody hand and grimaced.

"Jack," he said. "Next time watch your back, nerd."

He grinned lopsided at her and ran off towards the playground. Val was awestruck.

She didn't realize how long she had been standing there until one of the recess monitors came over in a fuss to clean her up.


	6. Roman Christmas Holiday

Mrs. Reynolds, for whatever reason, adored Mestral and Val. It was inconvenient at times although Mestral (and through several intense conversations, Val as well) understood that it was through loneliness that she seeked out their company. Her own family never visited or contacted their own matron. The weathered, grey-haired, oxygen-tank-strapped-to-her-walker maven of Coose Bay Boulevard would slowly shuffle her way down the half mile between her house and that of Mestral with an annoying frequency, and since Mestral had been raised to respect his elders, even if they had been Vulcan elders and not human, he had pressured himself into showing that same respect to Mrs. Reynolds. She had no idea that he was about 40 years older than her, and never would. For a Vulcan, he was just past middle age into elder territory and it seemed tactless to mention that to his octogenarian neighbor.

On this day, she was explaining classic cinema to a teenage Val as the three of them watched "Roman Holiday". The Christmas dinner was well underway; Mrs. Reynolds was tactful about Mestral and Val's vegetarianism and had brought a corn casserole that was sitting on the counter, waiting to be reheated for Christmas Eve dinner. The oven was full of their vegetarian lasagna that served as a holiday main dish on the meat-happy Terran planet.

"I was only thirteen when this came out in the theaters," Mrs. Reynolds reminisced in her Ozark accent, smiling vaguely as Audrey Hepburn had her hair cut in the film. "It changed a lot for me."

Val watched as the princess, with her disguise, snuck closer to freedom. "Was it the princess yearning for freedom or another aspect that did that?" She couldn't quite pin down what precisely was making Mrs. Reynolds sigh and reminisce like this.

The old woman chuckled. "All of it. You are very lucky to be born in a time where it is just fine for women to cut their hair and wear pants and have their own lives. When I was young, girls belonged in the home." She sighed. "My mother wanted to be a writer, way back in the '30's. But she met a boy and they had a baby- my late sister Temperance- and she never had a chance to write after that because of the expectations put on her. By the time I was born her early writing was in a box in the attic.

"You are blessed," Mrs. Reynolds took Valdena's tanned hands in her own wrinkled, pale grip, "In how these days girls can do anything. You can write. You can study. I promised myself that no matter what happened in my life that I would live to see a woman president. It hurts most days but I am still waiting and I donate half my social security to the womens' groups just so that it can come along that much faster."

Val was speechless. She blinked and waited until Mrs. Reynolds focused back on the movie playing before she herself continued watching as well. On the old wingback chair adjacent to the couch, Mestral refocused as well. As the movie continued and the scent of lasagna wafted through the air, the princess in the movie fell in love, and accepted that her responsibilities prevented that from ever being realized. As the credits rolled, Mrs. Reynolds sighed.

"That is the problem with dreaming," she drawled. "There ain't nothing that can be done if it wasn't meant to be."

The three of them- the Vulcan (albeit secretly Vulcan), the hybrid, and the human sat together at the small wood table in the kitchen and feasted on a strange Christmas dinner as another movie started on the classics channel in the background. Mestral and Mrs. Reynolds discussed the midcentury decades and cinema as Val listened, and outside a light snow began to fall.

After a few hours and an entire pie, Mestral drove Mrs. Reynolds to her home as Val did the dishes at theirs. The snow was beginning to accumulate and Mestral noted that in the morning he may have to go check on the old widow and make sure she was adequately prepared for being snowed in, but for now he hustled home to his daughter.

Val had just finished wrapping leftovers in the fridge and washing dishes when Mestral came in, stomping snow off his boots before proceeding further into the house. This snowy weather seemed intent on accumulating; there was already an inch on the ground by the time he got home and parked the truck in the carport.

"Let's keep watching Christmas movies," Val said, "And tomorrow when we go visit Mrs. Reynolds we can do whatever she wants."

Mestral nodded his approval, and the two of them sat on the sofa until late in the night watching holiday movies on the television.


	7. The First Snow

What surprised Mestral more than the sudden snow moving into the area as he drove in his simple truck to a volunteering event, was his daughter's reaction to it in the passenger seat. Val came along sometimes to help with the housebuilding projects, depending on how her education was going, When she had triumphantly finished her homework on the evening prior, he had given his consent for her to come build with him on the chilly Saturday project.

Mostly these projects were something to help pass his time. Mestral didn't have a career and mostly played the stock market for money- very successfully, having casually invented some software to basically do it for him. It provided for their own needs, but his sense of community from growing up on Vulcan had never quite fallen off. Today the volunteers that Mestral worked with were painting the interiors of a few houses that they had been rebuilding in a low-income neighborhood a few miles away. It was too cold to do any of the needed outdoor work. Since the project wasn't dangerous or overly complicated, he had elected to invite along his eleven year old daughter to help.

Val was in her denim yardwork overalls with thermals, underneath her winter coat and wool toboggan, while Mestral wore a thick flannel plaid shirt and jeans under his. She had elected to wear the hat so that she could pull her hair back, not dissimilar to how Mestral used his to hide his Vulcan ears. They rode in silence into town, Mestral focused on driving and Val looking out the window at the gloomy cloudcover.

She gasped suddenly. "Dad!"

Mestral glanced over at his daughter. "Yes?"

"It's snowing!" she said excitedly. Mestral frowned slightly, having to remind himself again that he had promised her mother that he would not to impede Val's enthusiasm no matter how much he disapproved of it. "There are snowflakes falling, look!"

There were indeed. It had snowed occasionally in Albuquerque, but not for long and never enough to accumulate. This was their first winter in the Ozarks of Arkansas and apparently it did actually snow here. So far all they had experienced was ice and sleet but it was indeed snowing now.

"What cloud type creates snow?" Mestral quizzed. Val didn't miss a beat.

"Altostratus. Sometimes cumulonimbus," she said, calming down under her father's cool demeanor. "I've never seen snowfall like this before though."

The flakes were indeed coming down rather hard, and Mestral turned on the radio to the weather station as they navigated the city streets. Apparently this was the beginning edge of a series of snowfalls that were supposed to hit over the afternoon and overnight. Hazardous weather, school and business cancellations were probable but not until the next day, so he decided not to turn around and they pulled to the curb down the street from the houses that the volunteers were fixing.

The men and women who volunteered for the community loved Val; she was usually the only child to help out and when her father wasn't around, she showed a wicked sense of humor. Mestral knew about this, but he hadn't figured out how to address this, or even if he needed to. There had never been a human/Vulcan hybrid before and in Val's first eleven years, he had determined that playing by ear was often the best policy despite how ridiculous it would be for a traditional Vulcan family.

Eight hours later, two of the three houses were completely painted and the third house was put off to a later date due to weather. Everybody wanted to get home before the snowstorm hit, Mestral and Val included. They cleaned up and organized the equipment, said goodbyes, and mutually split up to go home. Val told him stories that the other workers had shared throughout the day as Mestral drove, and they got home at dusk just as the roads were beginning to get slick. They bathed and cleaned up, and watched the snow start piling up over bowls of soup.

The next morning, Mestral woke to a scream and a door slamming. He jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. Nothing was out of place or broken. He frowned, and a sound outside caught his attention. He looked out a window and saw Val with just her coat over her flannel pajamas and rainboots, looking around enraptured. He sighed slightly and put on his own coat and gloves, grabbing scarves and hats for both of them as he stepped into his boots and went outside.

"Put these on," he said bluntly, handing Val her gloves and hat as he put his own on. "And I will teach you how to make a snowman."


End file.
